Kotovsky: from a robber to a red brigade commander
Victor Pelevin, having written the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness,” demonized Kotovsky, as well as Chapaev, giving them the role of a dark, metaphysical evil genius of revolutionary obscurantism. And at the same time, Grigory Ivanovich’s contemporaries, especially those under his command, literally idolized Kotovsky. In the capital of the Autonomous Moldavian Republic, which, by the way, was either jokingly or seriously called the Republic of Kotovia, in the city of Birzula (today Kotovsk, Odessa region), Kotovsky was embalmed after his death and buried in the same as V.I. Lenin, mausoleum, only smaller.
Subscribe to the news "PolitNavigator - Kyiv" inFacebook, Classmates orIn contact with
So this is Kotovsky!..
From Robinhoods to Apostles
Literally, bit by bit, today we have to restore the spirit of the Soviet era, its faith, its cults. And without the figure of Kotovsky it is impossible to do this.
Like Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky tried to consciously mythologize his own destiny, his own name, and create a cult of his own personality. But if Shevchenko tried to fit into the image of the Kobzar-Prophet, then Kotovsky made himself an epic hero.
At first, such a model for Kotovsky was the people's avenger. Born in Bessarabia, Kotovsky absorbed folk legends about robber-avengers, which always exist in any peace-loving people-farmers subjected to oppression. By the end of the nineteenth century, an insignificant number of Moldovans and Ukrainians lived in the cities of Bessarabia.
That is why in the questionnaires Kotovsky always wrote “Bessarabian” in the “nationality” column, even though he was Russian. It does not matter whether Robin Hood, Ustim Karmelyuk, Dubrovsky or Vasil Chumak inspired the young graduate of the Kokorozen Agricultural School, whose career as an estate manager went to hell due to his hot temperament and wild head.
With gloomy fatalism and dashing romantic prowess, Kotovsky chooses his first pseudonym in the spirit of the novels of A. Dumas - “Ataman of Hell.” Although later, when his incognito was revealed by the police, he prefers to tell his victim: “I am Kotovsky.” And legends and stories went for a walk not only in Bessarabia, but throughout Tsarist Russia. The last, until 1917, “exploits” of Kotovsky were covered in the “central” press.
Kotovsky considered himself Robin Hood
In prisons and hard labor, Kotovsky meets “political” people. After all, these are also defenders of the people! And the legendary image of Kotovsky “shifts” towards the underground revolutionary. In his court speeches, the former Ataman of Ada already takes the position of a defender of the entire “dispossessed class of workers and peasants.”
Defender of the disadvantaged class. Images from the modern TV series “Kotovsky”
Psychology is the key to everything
The revolutionary year of 1917 becomes a turning point in the fate of not only the country, but also G.I. Kotovsky. This is the beginning of a new era, and a new era requires a new person.
Grigory Ivanovich meets the February revolution in the Odessa prison castle, sentenced to indefinite hard labor. Just recently he escaped the noose. Although, while committing daring raids and robberies, he himself never killed a single person, or even seriously injured him, the escaped convict was sentenced to death for the totality of his crimes. And for the fact that he put together a gang, the members of which, using violence, were not as principled as their ataman, and for resisting arrest and numerous escapes from prison, and, in the end, for the fact that Kotovsky’s gangster fame spread which he contributed in every possible way, spoiled the reputation of the region. For the last arrest, the provocateur received 2000 rubles, and the policeman 5000 rubles. - big money at that time. What saved him from the noose was a letter to the wife of Brusilov, the head of the military district, who had the right to abolish the death penalty.
Certain phrases of this letter shed light on the mystery of Kotovsky’s personality. He promises that if his life is spared, he will create “from his life, through his honesty, selflessness and work that ennobles the human soul, a high example of human existence.” After all, “he committed crimes without being a criminal at heart, without having in his soul any of the elements characteristic of a criminal nature.” And Kotovsky understood perfectly what he was writing about.
Gifted with many talents, he was what is called a born psychologist. And being in a criminal environment, he perfectly understood the difference between himself and those criminal types mired in passions and vices.
As a child, due to an unfortunate fall from a tree, he stuttered, but by his youth he overcame this defect by willpower. Although not very tall (prison records and questionnaires show that he was 174 cm), Kotovsky developed enormous physical strength through constant training. And with age, he learned to curb his hot temperament. But, in addition, he developed the ability of suggestion and consciously used it. Here is a characteristic phrase from the same letter to Brusilova: “while carrying out mental violence, here too I tried to make it least noticeable and not leave a trace.” “Psychology” is a word very characteristic of Kotovsky’s vocabulary.
Kotovsky constantly trained physically. 1925
Kotovsky’s wife, who, by the way, looks like her mother, who died when Grisha was still very young, recalled that while watching the film “The Hanged Man,” Kotovsky lost his composure, and his face was distorted by a grimace of pain. Obviously, Brusilova's letter was not a simple attempt to avoid death. During daring raids, he looked into her eyes more than once. This letter was truly sincere, it was truly pained for. And looking at his further path in life, the promise “to become again, in the full and absolute sense, an honest person and useful for my Great Fatherland, which I have always loved so ardently, passionately and selflessly” seems not so empty.
To a new life
Just as with the February Revolution of “Gidnost” in Ukraine, with the February Revolution chaos came to the country. This was especially noticeable in Odessa, a port city, where one could find people of any nationality, all ideas and beliefs, where poverty and luxury, power and anarchy went side by side.
Local authorities did not know what to do with the prisoners: it was impossible to release them onto the streets of the city, and they could no longer hold them within the walls, because the prison guards were completely demoralized by the change of power. And here the prisoner Kotovsky spoke his confident voice. He managed, using both his fists and his authority, to restore order in the cells, and began to seek release “with a clear conscience,” that is, first of all, all criminal charges against himself were dropped and he was sent to the front.
During this enchanting campaign, he was even released into the city, albeit under escort, as a deputy for the prisoners. During one of these campaigns, he sold his leg shackles at an auction for fabulous money - about three thousand rubles. “Shackles are a symbol, no worse than other religious relics,” he apparently reasoned.
Kotovsky among cavalry soldiers. 1919
Kotovsky achieved his goal, and, fulfilling his promise to General Brusilov, he goes to the front. But it was a time of collapse, the collapse of the old system of power. Having tumbled around for a while in a cauldron where it is unclear where is up and where is down, Kotovsky himself becomes the source of order and power. From this moment on, the “cats” appear.
A gang of dashing robbers turns into a detachment of partisans, fighting against the interventionists and for the establishment of the only power that Kotovsky recognizes - the Soviet. And here Kotovsky, striving to “be useful for his Great Fatherland,” perceives himself as an instrument of the new government. He says and writes: “use me.” He is building a new state and putting things in order. If necessary, he fights against the interventionists, Denikin, Wrangel and the White Poles; if necessary, he suppresses peasant revolts and without hesitation destroys both peasant and Petliura gangs; if necessary, he establishes economic life in those places where his part stops.
Kotovsky fights against the Belopol occupation of Ukraine. 1920
“... now I am a Red Army soldier of the cavalry brigade named after Comrade Kotovsky, probably known to you for his heroism. I have never seen such people before and I have great respect for the brigade commander,” says Nikolai Ostrovsky through the mouth of his Pavka Korchagin.
Just like Pavka, Ostrovsky fought in Kotovsky’s brigade in his youth, also played the accordion and “conducted political work.” The first, unfortunately lost, book written by Ostrovsky was specifically about the Kotovo people. Maybe Soviet people would gain strength from reading not a book about Pavka Korchagin, but a book about Kotovsky. After all, the story “How the Steel Was Tempered” that we know is already the third or fourth version of a single book, which for some reason kept getting lost, a book that is largely autobiographical.
From a brawler and a robber, Kotovsky turned into a source of gathering order
Today, reading the book “How the Steel Was Tempered,” which was written by Nikolai Ostrovsky under the impression of the personality of G. I. Kotovsky, one inevitably asks the question: what kind of people can modern revolutionaries be if their role models are I. Mazepa, S. Bandera and others like them?
Kotovsky repeatedly washed away his life as a bandit with blood in the struggle to establish order, and he himself personally led cavalrymen into the attack. Current so-called Ukrainian volunteer battalions, which also mostly grew out of groups of bandits of varying degrees, remained organized groups, now receiving state support and weapons from warehouses.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.